


Rule Nine

by desperately_human



Category: Dublin Murder Squad Series - Tana French
Genre: Broken Harbor, Broken Harbor spoilers, M/M, Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy POV, Slight Canon Divergence, but like for a scene not in a way that changes any major outcome, first person because that's how the book is written, i adore this book, mentions the crime but not in graphic detail, so yeah still not a happy end, tried to write do Kennedy's narration like the book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-17 23:17:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21851311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperately_human/pseuds/desperately_human
Summary: I should have felt a snap, you don’t do this with people you work with, I should have felt that rule break inside me like a wishbone. I didn’t. It felt solid, as everything was slipping around me, like the sharp slice of a rock on the sole of my foot as the water and sand rushed past me in the outgoing tide.
Relationships: Richie Curran/Mick "Scorcher" Kennedy
Comments: 21
Kudos: 11





	Rule Nine

_Richie said ‘You wanted to be sure,’_  
_‘Yeah’_  
_‘Are you?’_  
_I groped for that feeling, that sweet patter if things falling into all the right places. It was nowhere; it felt like some pathetic fantasy, like a child’s story about his stuffed toys fighting off monsters in the dark. ‘No,’ I said. My eyes were still closed. ‘I’m not sure.’--_ Tana French, Broken Harbor

  
The wind was blowing hard around Dublin Castle when we left, cold air rushing through the tiny breaks in cracked stones with a sound like nails on rough wood. I thought of Pat’s animal, sharp claws scrabbling on the attic beams, glanced sharply over my shoulder. Nothing there but Richie, who has stopped to look at me, eyes gentle with compassion. I almost said something then, about the Spains in their paper house, doing everything right, and then it hit me, the electricity shimmering through my temples: this was the thing I had admired in him all week, that open, understanding stare; this was how he looked at suspects. 

I pushed past him toward the car, deliberately knocking my shoulder against his and feeling a flash of that bright flicker of triumph when he failed to hold back a gasp of pain. I like to draw a line down the middle of the Spain case, to say: this is where it all changed, this is the place I stopped being me. I like straight lines. But sometimes at night, when I’m watching Dina drift of to sleep on my sofa, when I wake up and pretend I can’t hear the waves, I have to recognize that it was more complicated than that. The way I had shouted at Sinead Gogan, the way it had felt, and that night with Richie. Maybe I could have walked back from that edge, chalk to up to one case that wrecked my head—we all have them—or maybe it was always coming, an unstoppable waterfall tumbling from the blind, blank windows of the Brianstown houses down to the sea and carrying me along. What I know is this: I wouldn’t have done it before the broken harbor case, when I would have found the certainty of procedure and knowing that I was doing everything right more comforting than any uncertain human touch. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have done it after. 

‘Want to get a drink?’ Riche had caught up with me, and if he turned out to be as relentless in following up clues as he was ignoring that I clearly wanted to be left alone, he really would make a great detective. I knew I was angry at him, but I had forgotten what for, and I swore I could taste salt in the wind. I don’t like to drink during cases, especially the difficult ones: it’s too easy to fall into a pattern, drink to block out the images, use it as a crutch. I had spent my life fighting against these patterns, against things that were easy and yet so dangerous, but in that moment I almost said yes. But in the steadiest part of my mind I could see Dina letting herself in the door and finding me gone, Dina waiting for me and pacing the room and leaving again to wander the streets until she found whatever she thought would hurt me most. 

‘I’m going home,’ I said. I didn’t have an obligation to explain. 

‘Alone?’ We had reached the car, and he circled to the passenger side and leaned against the roof, chin propped on his hands. I wasn’t sure if it was exhaustion or an attempt to act casual, or if he really did feel that comfortable around me. Rule Nine, I almost told him: know when to stop pushing. I didn’t feel like teaching lessons then, maybe part of me already knew that it had gone too far for that: that there was nothing more I deserved to teach and nothing more he wanted to learn from me. So I just nodded. 

‘You shouldn’t be alone.’ Appallingly, he had opened the side door and swung himself into the car. 

‘What—’ I couldn’t speak for a moment, couldn’t see his face to check whether he was laughing at me or had that sweet-serious suspect face again—either one and I would have punched him. Gritting my teeth, I dropped into the driver’s seat so we were eye level. ‘What the hell gives you the right to decide that?’ I could feel my heartbeat in my eyes, the waves crashing around the car, too angry to remind myself they weren’t real, ready to be carried on that tide of righteous fury. It was getting easier and easier every time. But he stopped me cold.

‘We’re partners,’ he said, as if it was just as simple as that. And maybe, I thought, maybe it was. Maybe it was for all those partners who seem to communicate without talking, who put their lives in each other’s hands as easily as handing off a cup of coffee. Maybe this was how it was supposed to work. So we drove. 

Dina wasn’t in the apartment, but the strip light in the kitchen fizzed and flickered. I tried desperately to remember turning it on. I crouched to open the cabinet below the counter where I kept the half-forgotten bottle of whiskey, and for a few awful second I couldn’t do it; my fingers gripped the handle and I told myself if I opened the door there would be no hole smashed in the wall, no unblinking camera. Richie coughed in the other room and the sound woke me, I swung the door open and pulled out the bottle, flexing my hand to ease the pain from where I had clenched it too hard.   
I consider my apartment well-furnished, the chairs and sofa don’t match but they’re usable, and the east-facing windows let in a healthy dose of morning sun—people who keep their shades shut all day are another group who shouldn’t be surprised to find themselves depressed. That night, though, I realized that every chair had its back to the windows, and rather than make a fuss of turning one around I sat beside Richie on the short sofa. He glanced at me, I could feel it in the prickle of my skin even when I wasn’t looking, but said nothing. 

Something about the whiskey tasted off, less smoke and more musk—I though again, unwillingly, of Pat’s animal—and the wind tugged at the windows, knocking to get in. Richie turned to me, warm and solid and fizzing with yellow light and I leaned unconsciously toward him until I caught what he was saying.

‘—even though there’s no animal,’ he glanced at me as if I was going to correct him, but I was far beyond arguing for Pat Spain’s sanity. ‘there’s something wrong with that house, yeah? Like it was so easy for Conor to get a look in, because of all the empty places. And Pat heard something in the attic, sure, that started all this. And Jenny all alone—’ he glanced away, shutting up quick. I should have seen it then, then and a hundred other times, but all I thought was that he was remembering how he had messed up the interview earlier. It was stupid speculation, verging on absurd—like I said, there was something sad about the Brianstown development, all right, but Richie was going back to his creepy thing. I shouldn’t have had time for it, but the strip light was on in the kitchen again even though I was sure I had switched it off, and I remembered staying up late with the other summer kids at Broken Harbor, sharing a smuggled beer and telling ghost stories, and how maybe it was the last time I hadn’t felt alone. 

‘You shouldn’t start a place like that and then abandon it,’ I wasn’t sure what was going to come out of my mouth, but for once I just let it, ‘it’s…not right. Not just to the families. Yes, it is unfair to them, they were promised something. They were doing what they were supposed to, buying the house and great open space of the kids. But,’ I lost track of what I was saying. I wasn’t drunk, I had barely touched my drink, but the window was on one side—rattling, knocking, daring me to open it—and Richie on the other—warm, earnest, pressed so close that I swore I could feel the awful, cheap fabric of his trousers crushed against my leg—and the whole room had that sucking feeling of the tide off Broken Harbor. Part of me wanted to let go and see where it took me, but every good thing I have ever done has been based on fighting that desire to let myself wash away. I turned toward him, hand clenched on the back of the sofa, reaching for something solid. 

‘But it’s not fair on the place.’ Richie picked up the dropped thread of our conversation, ‘it used to be a little town, you know, I looked it up’ I nodded, not trusting myself to speak, ‘they gutted the soul out of that town and then never replaced it. The people, the childcare and the leisure center and neighbors talking to each other with kids on bikes in the street, that should have been its new soul.’ His voice was rising, his back a little straighter, making steady eye contact. It should have been funny, or maybe awful, that he not only thought suspects were real people but that places were real people, too. It wasn’t either of those things. That night, saltwater and sand itching under my skin, sorrow pounding my temples, it felt like the only actual for explanation for those two dead kids and Pat and Conor and all that blood that made any sense. He fell silent, still looking at me, still but for his uneven breathing. 

‘It was a good place,’ I said. It felt like a moment that demanded something, a sacrifice, and my memories of Broken Harbor were the only thing worth giving, ‘a happy place. Before.’ He nodded. He didn’t ask. That silence spun between us, sharp and brittle and beautiful as new-blown glass. I leaned forward, rocked by the waves, closing my eyes against the intrusive glare of the kitchen light, and then his mouth was on mine. 

It should have been a breaking moment. I should have felt a snap, you don’t do this with people you work with, I should have felt that rule break inside me like a wishbone. I didn’t. It felt solid, as everything was slipping around me, like the sharp slice of a rock on the sole of my foot as the water and sand rushed past me in the outgoing tide. Like a mug of warm coffee in freezing hands, fingers so chilled I was sure I was going to drop it. We reached for each other at the same time and there was a second of arms and hands tangling before we sorted out who was holding whose waist and whose hands were in whose hair. Richie breathed a laugh against my lips and I tugged on his hair to drag him closer. I couldn’t remember how long it had been since someone had touched me like this, but it didn’t matter; this was more than that, this was the fact that I knew he woke up at night seeing that camera pointing at the gaping hole of the attic hatch, and how we took turns in interviews, that he had walked out during Emma’s autopsy and I had lost my temper with the Gogans and there we still were. 

It wasn’t that the waves stopped, exactly, but feel of his hands on my back, running up my thighs, his hair between my fingers, his cheap sweater, the sting of whiskey on his tongue, those things were louder. There is no one in the world I would tell this to, but I think about that night sometimes, when the sheets on my bed crumble like sand between my toes and the air goes salty and the boiler sounds like it’s crying for help. I hold those fifteen minutes in my hands, let them sift through my fingers, wrap them around me like a scarf and try not to breathe.

When it did break it was quiet, the delicate shattering of glass against all the sounds in that room, almost musical. He pulled back, something frozen and awful in his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ voice rough and soft. Time was like molasses, my perfect reaction time all gone to hell, I still had my hand on the back of his neck when he pulled the bag from his inside pocket. It took ages for my eyes to focus, to understand what I was seeing: a tuft of pink thread caught on a single, perfect, broken nail. 


End file.
